Peaceful Night
by Andromache
Summary: Be careful what you wish for because you never know what will happen.


Peaceful Night  
by Andromache 

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Dragonball Z. I have no money. Sueing me is pointless. 

Note: This takes place shortly before the Tenkaichi Budokai (World Martial Arts Championships). From this point on, an alternate universe takes over. There is very little point in warning about possible cursing if your eyes have already floated down the page a little. If you think they get out of character, I will wave my poetic license in front of you.

  
"Fuck...ASS!"

  
You could always tell when it had been a particularly demeaning day for Vejiita. The gravity room labored and struggled for its technological soul as it took hit after hit from the Saiyajin prince's hands and dealt with the strain of the increasing pull of artificial gravity. Bulma would be pissed when this one broke, but she had come to expect it after the second time that it had been demolished. 

Earlier in the day, while watching Kakarott's two brats train, Bulma had made an offhanded remark to Kakarott's screeching mate that it was not hard to see why Kakarott's brat was the strongest on the planet, maybe even the universe. Somehow Vejiita's pride radar went off, and he had stormed off to prove her wrong. However, the gravity room was quite willing to throw in the proverbial towel and declare Vejiita the strongest creature to ever have existed. The creaks and groans of its infrastructure sounded like submissive whimpers as energy blasts demolished another droid and the wall behind it. Even Vejiita had to admit that maybe he ought to stop for now so that Bulma would not deny him her bed while she repaired the room. He was supposed to tell her before the room was verging on collapsing on top of him again that it needed an upgrade, or else he slept on the couch for a week. He swore that Bulma turned the air conditioning down extra low on those nights to torture him.

Speaking of torture, sparks started leaping out in jagged arcs from the quaking pillar in the center of the gravity room. The roof followed suit, and soon pieces of the ceiling rained down on him as the room reached its limit. Normally, Vejiita might have noticed that the indomitable metal walls were shaking, some parts even starting to liquify under the constant assault of his training session. He was too far gone, however, to realize that the gravity room was coming down around him. He reached deep within to the center of his ki, the kokoro, and called on it to create an enormous blast, larger than his Final Flash attack. Swirling, pulsating blue energy tore off entire sheets of glossy white metal walls and dashed them to the floor, crumpling them like pieces of paper. It formed into a staff-shape that Vegeta gripped in his hands like a royal scepter. 

He felt like he was losing himself in the act of creation. His eyes were wide open, and he howled as the staff burned his hands through the shielding force of his ki in his skin. Blisters and stark red burn marks started to form on the palms of his hands as he braced his legs far apart on the rippling floor. Larger and larger chunks of the walls and ceiling crashed down all around him until a large piece fell on the nape of his neck, disrupting his concentration. His energy attack exploded, completely demolishing the gravity room. Remains of the building scattered themselves about the landscape at sub-sonic speeds and buried themselves deep into the springtime earth. 

Vejiita, weakened from the display of power, fell to his knees amid the smoking debris. The staff was gone, but the blisters and the burns were still there, marring his hands with lashes of searing pain. The silence after the explosion was insidiously deafening until the tiny sound of a bird chirping filtered into his ears. A slow, cool breeze brushed over his skin and through his hair. It washed away bits of debris around his eyes, and he closed them, shutting out the world and the destruction. He felt his heart slowing down from its frenzied beat during the training session. His lungs drew in some of the cool air but not enough to prevent him from falling to the ground and passing out into blissful unconsciousness.

He could not feel the touch of Bulma's fingers on his forehead, nor could he see the worried look in her azure blue eyes. Her orders to the Son boys to carry him to the infirmary fell on Vejiita's deaf ears. His mind still worked, however, and his thoughts drifted slowly at first, then faster, towards finding the cause for that almost-newly born attack.

A pastoral scene unfolded in his mind. He was strangely enough sitting beneath a massive oak tree, more than a hundred years old judging by its size. Sitting next to him, Bulma offered him a bowl of nikujaga, a hearty beef and potato stew even though there was no evidence of cooking or even a picnic basket to carry it in. The grass beneath them was a glowing green. Its blades waved gently although there was no wind. Two pairs of boots appeared in front of him, and the people wearing those boots were his...parents. They were supposed to be dead along with the rest of the Saiya no minzoku. Frieza blew them to hell with his goddamned army of high technology and death ships. He was still bitter that he was not the one to deliver the megalomaniacal bastard to the devil himself. His mother, the queen, bent down and touched her son's cheek, saying, "We are more alive than you think we are."

His father, the imposing King Vejiita, added with a strange smile, "We will see you soon, my son."

He was about to ask what they meant by that when Vejiita's hands sent aching signals back to his brain, and eventually he woke to find the familiar sight of Bulma slumped in a chair, staying with him no matter what. He remembered the first time that he had woken up and seen her waiting by his bedside. His feelings for her might have started then. Eh, who knows? Better yet, who cares?

Vejiita reached out his injured right hand, swathed in bandages because of the burns, and gently touched the inside of her left wrist. Her skin was so delicate and smooth, and he could feel her pulse softly beat under his fingertips. The sleeve of the light blue terry cloth robe caught on the edge of the bandages and tickled his knuckles. She shifted herself on the chair and sighed, no sign of waking. Vejiita smirked demonically, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly, and grasped her wrist in his hand and pulled her hand forcefully to his mouth. Bulma woke in a mild panic when she felt herself falling over, and she gasped as she found herself staring directly into Vejiita's disturbingly intense black eyes.

"Woman, get me something to eat before I bite your fingers off."

Bulma sardonically raised her eyebrow and replied succinctly, "No."

"No?" Vejiita asked, a mischievious spark appearing in his eyes. He angled her hand and started kissing the back of her hand down to her fingers. "Are you sure?" 

"Quite. It's three a.m. Breakfast won't be served until seven a.m. when Trunks gets up to go to school. You know that. Oh!" she gasped. Vejiita was now lightly sucking on the tips of her fingers, a smoky, seductive look in his eyes. Bulma rolled hers and remarked, "Vejiita, honestly, no one would know that you had been hurt at all the way you're acting now."

"I wasn't hurt. I was merely tired from expending my energy," he protested.

"Right. What about your hands? What happened in there?" Bulma asked, worry evident in her eyes. She had only seen Vegeta seriously injured once before, and it frightened her to see him like this again. "Vejiita? Please tell me." 

He sighed resignedly and squeezed her hand. Vegeta let a moment of silence pass before he began. 

"I was training..."

"Of course," Bulma snickered. Vejiita flashed her a dark look, and she quieted.

"As I said, I was training, and somehow I reached further into my ki than before. S...something happened, and I lost control of the attack. The gravity room exploded, and then I lost consciousness," Vejiita's voice trailed off.

Bulma prompted, "Was there something else?"

"While I was unconscious, I had a dream that my parents told me that they were not dead and that they would be seeing me soon. That is impossible. They died in the rebellion when Frieza destroyed Vejiitasei." Vejiita fell into a stubborn silence, pursing his lips together, and he looked reluctant to speak again. Scratch that. He was more than a little reluctant to speak. He looked like he would flatout refuse if Bulma asked him another question until he started speaking of his own accord.

"I remember my parents before they died when I was a little boy. My father was gruff and proud, and he truly knew how to be a king. He sternly stared down any vassal that tried to pull a scam on him and the royal family of Vejiitasei. 'Oh, Lord Vejiita,' they'd say, 'we need more money to fix the damaged land from the floods last summer and reseed all the fields for the farmers.' They would never get away with it. Somehow Father always knew that they were lying and would punish them by sending the minister of the land to inspect the damage so he would know exactly how much money they needed, oftentimes very little or none at all, which was always far less than they demanded that he give them. Then he would dismiss them from their positions for perjuring themselves to the King."

"What about your mother? What was she like?"

"She was strong-willed, too. Mother was the only person that could refuse Father if he wanted something from them. I think my favorite memory of her was when she and I would sit down together on the balcony overlooking the royal garden, and we would not speak but would simply be peaceful for a moment in the middle of the day. Inbetween all the training and sparring and lectures about strategy, we would be still and take in the sunlight. I felt warm and safe with her then." The next words did not even have to be spoken: then it all fell apart. The race was all but eliminated in a cruel act of genocide, and the planet itself was obliterated while Frieza laughed his ass off in his ship, safe from the cold tomb of space that folded the dead and the remnants of the planet into its frigid, airless breast. Vejiita was an orphan at a young age because of the sadistic jollies of a vicious, alien tyrant. 

"Do you still miss them?"

"Bulma, you might as well say that the laws of physics are all lies before I would say that I have stopped missing my father and mother." Vejiita's eyes flashed with indignation. Ancestor worship was a core element of religion on Vejiiitasei. You never forgot your past even for an instant. Never. 

Noting his reaction, Bulma cupped his jaw in her left hand and said, "I'm sorry, Vejiita. I didn't mean to imply that you were..."

"Callous? No, I got over that," he replied bitterly, his jaw set firmly, and Bulma could feel the tension pulsing into her hand. His entire body was immobile with tension. He would have clenched his fists, but his painful burned hands prevented it. 

"What do you think that the dream meant?" Bulma ventured, taking a different path, hoping to get some reaction out of Vejiita. She both hated it and dreaded when Vejiita would refuse to talk to her. His inner demons preyed on those times to gain control over him and return him to his formerly murderous life. She had to break him out of this mood.

Eventually Vejiita responded to her in a low voice, "I don't know what it means. That's the problem. I know they are dead. Hell, most of the universe knew when Frieza ordered Vejiitasei to be destroyed. He made sure of it. No one else was going to try rebelling against him after seeing what happened to my race. There is no reason at all for a dream like this to happen." He turned his face away from her, but Bulma could still see the stubborn set of his jaw. His dream was so paradoxical that it dredged up all the old feelings of grief so that the psychic wounds felt as if they were brand new. He struggled to quash the feelings down so he could get on with his life.

She was a loss for words, and her eyes lowered to the floor with guilt from her mistaken question. You could never talk to someone in mourning without getting your head bitten off though. Their thoughts and emotions were completely devoid of reason, and they lashed out at anyone who dared intrude. Try to comfort them, and you end up missing a limb if they are so inclined. Bulma had never grieved for anyone in her life. Her parents were still alive unlike Vejiita's. She could not possibly know how Vejiita would feel right now at all. 

Bulma stood up and walked over to Vejiita's temporary bed, sitting down on the rumpled covers. She could feel her hip brush Vejiita's thigh when she leaned over to kiss his forehead. Bulma whispered, "I'm sorry, love. I never meant to hurt you like that."

He sighed, trying to appear annoyed at her display of affection. Vejiita put his arm around Bulma's neck since his hand was bandaged, and he craned his face upwards to give her a quick kiss. Not too long or else someone might think he was getting soft in his domesticity. 

"Forgive me?" Bulma murmured against his lips. 

"I may have to. Who else would have me?"

Bulma laughed softly, exhaling onto Vejiita's neck. She braced her hands on his relatively unscathed torso and pushed herself upwards, smiling down at her lover. The quiet, passive moment was interrupted by the entrance of a disheveled Dr. Briefs, Bulma's father. 

"Bulma! I thought you would be here! I have some wonderful news!" he said excitedly. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, and the little black cat on his shoulder had a difficult time staying on. It dug its claws into his shoulder, but Dr. Briefs didn't notice it at all.

Sighing and hanging her head, Bulma replied, "Yes, Dad, what is it?"  
  
"I finally got a response back from those radio transmissions I've been sending into space as a part of the SETI project!"

Her eyes got just as wide as her father's. "Really? Where from?"

"A planet called Vejiitasei!"

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